Saturday, February 23, 2013

Weekend Freebies

Several great free genre items today - both written and audio.

Fiction
At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "Sate My Thirst with Ink and Blood" by Adam Callaway. Fantasy. "My camel died in the middle of a sandstorm. Until that moment, I did not
know camels could die. They seemed as much a part of the landscape as
the dunes or the dry riverbeds. Maybe camels exist in geologic time, and
the one I had stolen from the spice merchant had been around since the
days when Ars and Dem were one lush continent; before the Tragedy rent
the land in two and sent the pieces to opposite ends of the great round
world."

• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "The Language of True Things" by Nick Scorza. Fantasy. "The boy’s new master wore a dirty wig, slightly askew—a halfhearted
gesture at propriety. His old master and his journeymen, who suffered no
insult from guards, priests, or Viceroy’s soldiers, withdrew in fear
and stumbling bows from this rumpled little man, who might have been a
drunken petty lord but for his owlish stare."

• At Cosmos: "Sleeping Beauty" by Thoraiya Dyer. Speculative Fiction. "There’s nobody in the scorched, flattened remnant of the city. No secret tunnels. No footprints in the ash."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Five Minutes" by Conor Powers-Smith. Most men were perfectly capable of understanding signals, but some chose
not to. Apparently this was one of those, because he said, "Hey, uh...
can I buy you a drink?"

• At Paizo: "The Fate of Falling Stars: Chapter Three: Buried in the Sky" by Andrew Penn Romine. Fantasy. "Captain Najh Semekh
and his two soldiers formed a wall between Shaba Alemas and me. Drawn
scimitars gleamed cold with starlight, while Najh's knife dripped rancid
black fluid. I drew my own dagger, trying to catch Shaba's eyes, but
they were hidden in pools of shadow. The sleeping roc stirred, the sound
of its feathers ruffling like the canvas of a ship under sail."

• At Cast of Wonders: "Mercurial Skin"by Raechel Henderson. YA. "The boy wears standard neo-goth attire--lots of black and dripping in chains--but his costume can't hide his white-bread good looks. He’d be better suited to a band or school or fast food uniform."

• At Clarkesworld: "Vacant Spaces" by Greg Kurzawa. "Shepard ducked into the tug’s four-man cockpit, wincing at the strain on
his knees. His assigned jockey for the day’s salvage was already
hunched over his pre-flight checks at the console. Glancing up at
Shepard’s entrance, he made a disappointed grunt before resuming his
work."

• At Escape Pod: "The Tamarisk Hunter" by Paolo Bacigalupi. Science Fiction. "Ten years ago, it was a good living. Back then, tamarisk shouldered up
against every riverbank in the Colorado River Basin, along with
cottonwoods, Russian olives, and elms. Ten years ago, towns like Grand
Junction and Moab thought they could still squeeze life from a river."

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 25 - The Return of Tarzan" Adventure. "Jane Porter has been captured by the frightful gorilla-men of Opar. Now, she has been prepared for sacrifice on the altar of The Flaming God. La, the High Priestess, is slowly lowering the sacrificial dagger toward her heart"

• At Pseudopod: "Cry Room" by Ted Kosmatka. Horror. “Around him, ladies fanned themselves in the heat, dressed in their
Sunday finest. At the front of the church, the minister began. He was
an older gentleman, narrow and angular as the church itself. Somewhere
up ahead, among the sea of blue hair and balding pates sat his cousin
Jason—along with Jason’s wife, her grandparents, and other assorted
relation, both close and distant, all here for the special occasion."